FAILURE TO RESTRAIN

Being hasty in our conversations with others, failure to restrain from assumptions and words that we want to say, anger that flairs up when we get our feelings hurt and not being on our guard spiritually can do more damage in relationships than any other thing. When our moments become moments that are all about us moments and we fail to see the real issues, we are missing out on opportunities to be Christ to others. But, when we model the Lord’s behaviors, we become more loving, more willing to sacrifice our rights, seeing a little more of how God may be looking at the situation and we can be a great blessing to others, instead of what they may perceive as being a thorn. Letting go of those moments of control, judgement, haste, and pride brings us closer to God and it is then when we become all things in able to win them. I know that the Lord is committed to me, so I need to commit to Him. I want to have a teachable spirit and be willing to accept His correction, or discipline. Yes, God disciplines me! He disciplines you too if you belong to Him. His discipline may hurt, but it is not harsh, nor does it scar or tear down. His discipline corrects, reveals and builds us up and moves us into the direction of better actions if we choose to summit to it. Learning how we speak to one another is not a onetime process. It is continual.  We all possess the opportunities of producing a harvest with our words. But in order to produce a transforming harvest with our words we need to be ever cautious to bless, lift up, show love and build positive and loving relationships, not tear down. 

That thing that causes friction, conflicts, even fights and quarrels between yourself and someone you may care about is found in James 4:1-3, it says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it…. .” God’s Word teaches us that conflicts in us come from the wrong desires that battle within our hearts and is the result of our sinful nature. Sin in us is always lurking to threaten our happiness and our fellowship with one another. The enemy uses everything and every opportunity he can to cause our focus to be misplaced, because he knows when that happens, even the smallest of things can escalate. Once we give in to our sinful nature, God is ignored and we take matters into our own hands. It is with great effort that we must train our minds to be set on God for those moments and what He has instructed us to do in those situations. Sometimes, what we think are good desires, can be escalated to reach a sinful retaliation, if our thoughts and ways are not His and we do not deal with our emotions and feelings by making the choice to put them to death in us. When something is dead, it has no voice, no feeling, no emotion, and no response. Truth becomes concealed as if we did not know it or worse, it becomes twisted. Our listening shuts down and we are not understood, nor do we understand the other person, thus the conflict.

When my daughters were little, I found myself constantly picking up and cleaning up messes that they made. There were times that I thought, they would never learn to stop making messes. As they got older and I continued training them and working with them to be more aware and thoughtful about making messes, the less they made.

This is how God deals with His own children. As His children grow in His grace and knowledge from the point of their new birth, they struggle trying to do the right thing. Like small children, they make messes in their lives. Those messes often times even affect others as well. Yet, as they grow in truth, desiring to do better, they begin to make less messes and they learn how to clean up the messes that they make by responding in the right way. Sometimes that may mean to seek forgiveness or forgive others that might have made a mess and it affected you as well. Forgiveness is a direct command and mandate from God to His Children. It is something extremely special which we are given, and something precious we are to replicate to others. It is not easy. It requires the practice of maturity, the patience to allow the process to unfold, and the tact to endure it and remember this, obedience is worth the sacrifice. Whether we realize it or not, being hurt is the place where bitterness takes root in a fertile heart, that is fallow for planting. So, be sure to sow the right seeds for a godly harvest and not bitter ones.

 

Loving on you today sweet friend,

Bren

HOW GOD SEES YOU

Do you see yourself as limited in some way? Do you think of yourself as being less than what you think you should be? If so sweet friend, may I remind you to pause a moment and know that your negative attitude will quickly change when you begin to see yourself in the light of how God sees you. Though sin certainly stains and tarnishes our life in many ways, God sees us the way that you and I were created to be and not defined by our events, wrong choices and circumstances. He knows that we are all sinners and fall short because the scriptures tell us in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. He did not wait for us to repent of sin, get perfect or do anything at all to love us, He just loved us. Even while we are at our worse, He died for us because he loves us that much.  When He looks at us, He see the potential that He created in us to have.

Now with that being said, it is up to us to make the effort towards reaching that potential, but even in our frailties and weakness, God sees in us the best that we “can be”, when surrendered to His will. His, very word encourages us to renew our minds to His way of thinking and that we put on the new man, which is the new nature that God places in us, as we turn to Christ in repentance for salvation. For it is that new nature in us that seeks to be like God in true righteousness and holiness according to Ephesians 4:23-24. It is the new nature that allows us to see things as God sees them. The Bible says that our ways and our thoughts are not His. But once we receive that new man or new nature that comes from God, the dimness of how we see ourselves becomes ever so clear to us and we become humbled and grateful to God for His deep and caring love. Since God’s love for us is so immeasurable, we need never to feel alone, unloved or unimportant, even in our darkest moments. For it is in those times that God is trying to turn our attention to Him. Once we surrender our all to Him, how we view ourselves and others will change and a sweet peace and joy will replace those negative feelings that the old sinful nature in us is fighting to have its way. “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” James 4:10

Loving on you today,

Bren

SHAME ON YA'LL

Anyone can have a side to them in their nature, to be slothful and uncaring about things other than what effect their small world and environment. As long as they are doing what pleases them, they care not how the rest of the world is effected by their unconcern and laziness. Laziness stems from one thing; attitude. To conquer it we must learn to actively make it pursue God’s will. Some people struggle with too much free time, while others struggle with no or little to no free time, at all. Those that suffer with too much are those that Proverbs is talking about in Proverbs 24:30-32, when Solomon spoke these words,  "I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction."  the character of the caretaker represent a spirit of selfishness, laziness and mismanagement. These folks are happiest when they are not bothered with anyone or anything, nor are they held accountable to the point where they must do something. The sad thing about laziness, is that it robs us of blessings and relationships and affects others in a negative way. The book of Proverbs paints a contrast between the lazy individual and the diligent one. The lazy person does not get out and work but rather lies around the home. He is pictured in Proverbs 6:10 as one who sleeps when he ought to be working. He is admonished in those verses to learn from the diligent ant. One example of a diligent person is found in Proverbs 31, “She is a woman that found balance for her life and was blessed for it.” In Gal. 5:1 we are reminded to stand fast in our liberty where Christ has made us free, to choose and not be entangled again to the yoke of bondage. Self-discipline is essential to walking in obedience. As we practice self-discipline and begin to abide in what we know, the Spirit of God in us, produces the fruit in us that others will see and desire as well.

 

You see, that is really what our jobs are as God’s Children; to reflect Him to others. Making a practice of examining ourselves will aid us in becoming better managers of our lives over all. We need to evaluate ourselves to see what areas that we are lacking in and focus on those to bring them under our subjection as Paul said he did in I Cor. 9:27. On one occasion, King Solomon escaped from the forms of court and took a drive through the countryside unknown. He came upon a site that troubled him. As he looked over the broken wall of a little estate which belonged to a farmer in his country he began to ponder what he saw. This estate consisted of a piece of ploughed land and a vineyard. One glance showed him that it was owned by a sluggard, who neglected it, for the weeds had grown right plentifully and covered all the face of the ground. From this Solomon gathered instruction. Charles Spurgeon said of Solomon’s finding, “To a spiritual mind nettles have their use, and weeds have their doctrine. Are not all thorns and thistles meant to be teachers to sinful men? Are they not brought forth of the earth on purpose that they may show us what sin has done, and the kind of produce that will come when we sow the seed of rebellion against God?

 

I was reminded of these words as I saw a sign on the roadside that says, “If You Litter Shame On Ya’ll Up To $250 Fine” placed there as a reminder to us all, that we are held to a higher standard that what we may have for ourselves. Whether by the Holy Scriptures or by the local officials we cannot just live and do as we want because our actions effect the lives of other people. It is a reminder that we are not islands to ourselves. While people who trash the roads, streets, highways and neighborhoods may care nothing for how it effects anyone else, it is against the law and shows their lack of self-discipline, laziness and responsibility, not to mention that they are lawbreakers by cleaning out their cars as they are driving down the road. They care not that the trash that they are dumping into a neighborhood attracts rodents, roaches, parasites and mosquitoes which in turn spreads diseases and causes a shameful and detestable site to have to look at. Life is full of life-lessons if we would only learn from them as Proverbs 24:30-32 speaks about. We should be ashamed when we do not hold ourselves to a higher standard and make better choices in how we live and teach our children to live by our example. How we treat our roads and neighborhoods is only one way that we show we care for something other than ourselves and our respect for the law. How we respect the law shows others, how we respect the Creator and how we treat His laws as well. Lord, help us not to shame ourselves or You by being lawbreakers.

 

Hold Fast,

Bren

 

Desperate for God

How desperate for God are you? You may feel as though you have it all together spiritually and see no further need to know more about Him and if so, you are wrong. We are all sinfully desperate for God, all  the time! When we seek after God and He reveals truth to us through His Word, (which is His main line of communication to us) the revelation does not lead us to an encounter with Him, but the revelation itself is an encounter with God. As He is revealing truth to us, at that very moment, we are sitting directly in His presence as we are confronted with His Truth. God uses His Word to lead us into all truth and being in that truth is being in the very presence of the living God. Have you ever been in His presence? Are you wanting God to speak to you? If so, then you must make every effort that you can, to be in His Word. For apart from His Word, you will never know His presence. Can God speak to you apart from His written Word? You better believe He can! But He teaches us to seek Him through His Word. In seeking Him there, you will find His presence. If you have been born again, then the very Spirit of God dwells in you and will lead you to His Word, where you will find Him. There you will see everything that will ever touch your life, in light of His truth. The Holy Spirit will make the will of God known to you through His Word and when He does, you must take that truth and immediately adjust your life to it. Your faith is the vehicle that will lead you to encountering God, for without faith, it is impossible to please Him. It is not a concept, precept or philosophy, but a Person that you are adjusting your life to. It is the very person of God Himself, that you are making your adjustments to. Everything else, God’s precepts, His concepts, His philosophy…every need you have and everything about Him, is all wrapped up and found in His “Person”, and that my friend is what and whom you should be seeking, the very “Person of God Himself”. Jesus set the example for us, when He said, in John 14:31, “The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what the Father has commanded Me.”  Jesus demonstrated His love for God by His obedience and don’t think for a minute that God will not, nor does not expect anything different from us. The reward for loving God by our obedience is that He will show Himself to us. If today sweet friend, you have never encountered God, begin now to seek Him with your whole heart, He will not turn you away, if you are sincere. Seek Him and don’t give up until you find Him. If you know Him, yet feel far away from the relationship that you once had with Him, He is still there, it was not Him who moved away. Begin now to pray for restoration, and get back into His Word and as you do earnestly, you will begin to rekindle the flame of enthusiasm that you once had and as you do, the darkness from your turning away will be diminished and the light will grow stronger and you will begin to see more clearer upon spiritual matters once again! Be Strong, Keep the Faith and never, ever give up!

Hold Fast,
Bren

WRONG CHOICES NEED NOT LORD OVER YOU

Wrong decisions and regret can become your roommates, if you let them. But, if you do, remember this about them. They can lord over, control your self-worth and can send downpours of self-condemnation on you if allowed to rest in the form of depression and regret. They seem to reach through time and space and in doing so, there seems to always be negative consequences that follow them. When a person ignores the signals or warnings in their own heart and makes a bad decision or wrong choice, it will always generate a certain amount of consequence that consist of some type of misery or disappointment and that is guaranteed. It is simply only a matter of when it comes, and how much. The effects of bad or wrong decisions may consists of an individual compromise of themselves, they are not getting what they want, they have to learn lessons the hard way, they feel that they have already blown it and it’s too late to turn back now, or they may have to go back and cleanup a past mess. But the most insidious and damaging effect is the feeling of having wasted a part of their life. At that point a person can feel hopeless and defeated as if there is no turning back. But friend may I tell you that there is hope. Your future is not governed by your past. By that I mean that no matter what your past has been, through forgiveness and repentance from those wrong choices you can change your situation by changing your way of looking at them. Once you honestly commit to changing, you have already begun the process. We humans are so prone to failure, yet in God’s eyes failure need never be final. God’s Word is full of examples of men and women making wrong choices, failing themselves as well as God. Yet most every time it was right there in the middle of the “learning from those mistakes” process, that they found God, and for those that knew Him already, they knew Him deeper after they had walked through the lessons that they were forced to learn, from those mistakes. Once we let go and let God be and do in our lives as He pleases, we need not try and fix something, but simply by our letting go of it and trusting God for the outcome, our situation changes and our future becomes brighter, outwardly and internally. Make it your point today, to start over!

Hold Fast,

Bren

Responding To Offenses

 

 

As I have grown in my spiritual walk with Christ through the years, I have noticed some distinct changes in my life, my attitude and even in my responses to others as I have felt the painful hand of hurt and offense, touch my heart. When I choose the road less traveled and embrace the reality of my situations and think about them in terms of how God may be looking at them and not what my mind churns up about them, I am relieved from the pressure of having to have an answer concerning them. I am learning, that my only response in any matter, is to show the love of God and trust Him in things that I do not understand, knowing that in due time, He will reveal to me what I need to know and understand. Every offense against me, can be used as an opportunity to reflect the Character of the one that lives inside me, if I will only change my perspective. One day a young nurse was complaining to her pastor that she had been offended by some patients, “Thank God for that” her preacher replied, in which the young woman said, “What do you mean by that, preacher?”, “Why, if you were carrying a vase and someone bumped into you, that which is inside the vase could possibly spill out on them”, he said, and “As we go through life and people bump into us, we have the opportunity to spill out the Lord Jesus on them” he concluded. You see, we have the choice when we are offended to spill out anger, bitterness, jealousy and revenge, or broken and contrite hearts. This is how God’s Character inside His children spills out into the world. We may never be called to suffer an agonizing death for our faith. But any time that we quench the fleshly nature in us that is constantly warring to show it’s ugly face, by yielding to that which compels us to do the right thing, then we are denying the flesh it’s gratification of glory, thereby, bringing honor to the One who deserves it.  When we allow our perspective to reflect or mirror the embodiment of Christ in us, then any suffering that we may undergo will be worth it. Think of how the world would be, if we would walk more cautiously in trying to eliminate our critical attitude’s that repels others away from us ,when we respond to them in a wrong way, no matter what they have heaped on us. Proverbs 19:11 tells us that, “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.”  Godly wisdom helps us to have tolerance for the person who has offended us and gives us patience to find God’s plan to restore the situation. God always has a plan of restoration.  Sometimes we just need the patience to believe it will happen. Will you today sweet friend, face your trial that you may be going through with an attitude of good cheer, humility and a godly patience with the one who has wronged you and above all else, have the faith that God will honor you by your seeing things from His perspective and not your fleshly way of responding to a bad event. Matthew 7:5 tells us to first, remove the beam from our own eye, then we can see clear enough to help remove our brother’s speck and that part about removing the beam from my own eye in order to see the situation clearly, gets me every time. I can only see clearly, when I remove that which is causing me not to see the situation clearly. Most of the time, we must detach ourselves from the initial or onset of our  offense and step back to see the situation more clearly. How you respond to your offenses will reflect the strength of your walk, in Jesus!

 

Hold Fast,

Bren

HOW FAR WILL YOU GO TO OBEY?

Jeremiah was not an eloquent speaker nor was he a great preacher when God first chose him. God did not choose him because he was intelligent or mighty in any way. But Jeremiah was a man that trusted God in all matters, Jer. 10:23. He would not have been the man for the job, had God been seeking a superstar. For God wanted someone who was teachable, who was moldable to His will and was willing to be devoted to the task that God would require of him. That was the man Jeremiah and because of that trust, he took an unwanted message to a people that was rebellious and backslidden from the God they claimed to know. Because of that message, Jeremiah faced peril upon peril as he was mocked by his own people, Jer. 20:7, he faced death in verse 26, he was beaten and put in jail in 20:2 and again in 37:15, and was accused of derision in 38:4 and wanted him put to death because of it, those are only to name a few. The people of Jeremiah's time believed that they were invincible and somehow, had a free ticket with God because they were Jews. Most had no moral sense of faith, they thought that it was enough to only perform strict ceremonial acts as part of God's Law and attend temple. Their religion was external, material, and ceremonial. While Israel's spiritual status was bathed in a false security, Jeremiah knew the truth. To Jeremiah, righteousness started internally, it was spiritual, and based upon a personal relationship with God. Israel had become spiritually rotten to the core and God assigned Jeremiah the task of telling them so. Jeremiah's prayer life was the source of his strength that enabled him to keep preaching the truth in the face of fierce opposition from the very ones that he was trying to reach with the message God had given him to share. To face the fire of people's anger and the icy cold shoulders of their rejection. Clinging to the Lord, even the hardest of times, allowed God to create perseverance in Jeremiah. Jeremiah's prayers and perseverance indicate an undying love for his fellow brothers, of which was never understood by his contemporaries. What made Jeremiah a great preacher was his prayer life, his tenacity and perseverance, and his burden for those whom he was called to go to. Although Jeremiah was often treated unjustly by those about him, the consequence of sin on his fellow countrymen led him to pray fervently many times on their behalf. Chapter fourteen is devoted totally to his intercession on their behalf as he confessed sins and begged God for mercy on them.

Jeremiah developed a close personal relationship with God from the very beginning. He had such a dependency upon God that he never concealed any thought from Him. His first recorded words to God were, "I do not know how to speak, because I am a youth" 1:6. Jeremiah had thought he had limitations at first. But God proved to him that it was not his ability that God sought, but his obedience. While Jeremiah had praises for God, as found in 17:4 and other places throughout his writings, he was not always filled with praises. Oftentimes he complained. When a plot was revealed that some men planned to take his life, he went to God and asked, "Why does this happen? How can You let it happen?" in chapter 12. While Jeremiah was devoted to the welfare of his friends, family and countrymen, he had a burning desire according to chapter 20:8b-9  into telling them the painful truth about themselves, causing them to lash out at him. He complained, "I have not done anything to anyone, yet everyone curses me. Woe is me!" in chapter 15:10. The apparent frustrations over his fellow countrymen led Jeremiah to pray to God for justice in return for the injustice he had received. Some of his prayers contained hurls of imprecations concerning how he was treated, that give the readers a special insight into the extreme frustration and mental anguish he endured. From praises to curses, Jeremiah held nothing from the Lord, and the Lord sustained and strengthened him. When He felt God's awe and wonder, he praised Him. When he was persecuted and suffering, Jeremiah reminded God of his own faithfulness and asked for justice. Whether it was praise, complaint, or a call for judgment, Jeremiah's open and honest prayer life reveals the inward struggles that he endured with God’s help on a daily basis. Unless Jeremiah had worked to sustain his relationship with God through prayer, he would have never persevered. Like Jeremiah, may our hearts prayer be to have and contain the burden for others that God may be placing on our hearts or some other task and that we may be able to say, “So the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, “I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. Jer. 20:8b-9

The book of Jeremiah was the final prophecies that God sent to His precious Judah, a wayward and rebellious children. He told the prophet Jeremiah to go and take warning of the oncoming destruction, if the nation did not turn and repent. Jeremiah called out for God’s people to turn back to Him, as he recognized the inevitability of Judah’s destruction, due to their unrepentant idolatry and immoral hearts. Their hearts had become so hard against the truth, that they refused to neither recognize, nor see the warnings as real and forthcoming. Instead, they lay blame on Jeremiah…it was just easier that way, for his message fell on deaf ears and it was unwanted. As Jeremiah sought to do the right thing, it seemed as though no one was happy with him. When he rebuked Judah, they thought of him as a trouble maker, one who provoked dispute and caused conflict within the land and the people. He felt condemned if he did tell the people the truth and he felt condemned if he didn’t. I have felt that way myself, many times and can assure you that as you walk with God, you too will find the same discouragement as did Jeremiah; as it often goes with the call of being used of God and can often times leave you feeling despondent and pitted against the very ones that you are trying to help. The Lord responded to Jeremiah’s discouragement assuring him that he would care for him in those times of loneliness, misunderstandings and isolation from those that were cursing him for what he was doing. God told Jeremiah that He would rescue and deliver His people from their sin, redeeming them and liberating them from their bondage if they would simply, turn back to Him. While like Jeremiah, you too may face those spiritual dry patches where no matter how much you serve, how much you give and how much you do, you sometimes will succumb to discouragement, and like Jeremiah felt, you too may wonder why it is, that the very ones that you are trying to reach with truth appear to be an enemy, having no problems with how they are living or what they are doing. You must remember one thing….your job is not to bring the change, but simply to bring the message, seasoned in love and humility. We are servants of the Most High, and it is our job to speak the truth in love, and moreover, not to grow weary in our doing so. There have been saints and scoundrels all through history. The saints have understood some important things about what God’s Word teaches us and how we are to live if we are children of God. Scoundrels never seem to grasp those truths and laugh and mock at them, as though they were silly fables. If we know what to do in certain situations; then those truths can motivate us to resist the temptations that threaten to lure us off the high road and succumb to the low one.

Hold Fast,

Bren